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4' does not seem excessive to me, because the most dangerous place I remember being outside of a town was on a narrow, two-lane road on a mountain climb going up to a resort area and there were plenty of pick-up drivers pulling boats, and they obviously did not remember that just because the pick-up clears you doesn't mean the boat trailer's wheel or fender wouldn't kill you. The trailers were much wider than the towing vehicles! I never used my mirror so much in my life. I had to use it to control the traffic behind me and not let them pass at all where it wasn't safe. Since it was a climb and I couldn't go very fast, I'm sure they weren't happy about it, although they could see I was doing all I could to be both safe and courteous.

California law does allow taking the lane if it's too narrow for vehicles to safely pass you in the same lane, but that apparently is not the case in the senario illustrated in the cartoon. Motorists tend to lump us all together; so cyclists who do not ride courteously and do not obey the laws give us all a bad name, and endager all of us.

For Mag in NH: simply turn your rooftop bike mount around so that the front of the bike faces backward. That way there won't be so much air pressure pulling up on the handlebars/fork.

Like someone else said, the big problem is not pressure from the front, but the side-to-side motion that tends to pry the fork ends away, one side at a time. You could go ahead and file them down but not quite all the way, so that opening the skewer still lets the wheel out but there's still a barrier to a closed skewer.

Having the pivot right near the axle (or even below it) will definitely give the best handling. Burley and others use a mount that clamps to the left-side seat stay and chain stay, putting the pivot near the axle but not over the axle itself.

The tabs are a relatively recent thing. If you operate the skewer correctly and don't have a disc brake, the wheel will never come out while you're riding. I file them off, since they defeat the purpose of having a quick-release.

The big health problem with drinking water (or foods) and plastic is BPA, which, fortunately, is not used in most cycling water bottles.

Some people like the hydration packs because they have difficulty reaching for a water bottle and controlling the bike while drinking. Probably a greater reason however is that they're looking to carry more water, and make the mistake of thinking that the hydration pack carries more. I like to promote the 33-ounce Zefal Magnum water bottle. I and my family put two on the frame as usual, giving 66 ounces, and two more in the holder behind the seat total 132 ounces, which is more than a gallon altogether. This comes to a lot more water than even the very biggest hydration packs, without having to have any weight on your back. If you put another bottle cage under the down tube, you'll have over five quarts--165 ounces. Cleaning is extra easy with the wide-mouth top which is plenty big to put big ice cubes in if you care about that stuff. (Myself, I don't like my drinking water cold.) These have no BPA in them. If you want to supplement these by adding a hydration pack like to go long distances in hot mountains or desert where you won't have a chance to refill for a long time, go for it; but I'd say start with the bottles.

The Zefal Magnum bottle was unavailable for awhile, but is back now. We've bought 15-20 of them and never had any problems with them, but apparently a few people did have leakage problems, so Zefal apparently redesigned it and re-introduced it.

All of the catastrophic or near-catastrophic tire problems I and my family have had were on tires that were new or nearly new, meaning there was a manufacturing defect. For this reason, I'm not as confident in a tire until it gets through the first 250 miles without a problem. I would want to have that many miles on a tire before starting a tour on it. I've bought and maintained somewhere around 200 tires for myself and my family though, and we've never had a problem that could not be fixed with a boot. That even includes a full blow-out where there was a big rip down the middle of the tread. That one did go in the trash after that ride was over; but for smaller cuts (like ones you could stick a pencil all the way through), we've ridden tens of thousands of miles on booted tires, with no problem, and with full confidence to go 55mph on a downhill. One of the boots we all carry is a 3" piece cut out of a worn-out but otherwise undamaged racing tire, with the beads cut off. That's the extreme, the big one, and we've never used that one so far although I sure could have used it on the blowout I mentioned above if I had had such a boot back then. The smaller boots are cut from Mr. Tuffy or similar tire liners. Patching the inside of a tire is definitely not adequate, as the patch is stretchy and is intended to seal leaks, not give strength. We just use the pressure in the tube to hold the boot in place, and we never use glue or adhesive. It stays in place.

Wire-beaded ones are somewhat cheaper, and to me, they're easier to put on because they hold their shape unlike the folding ones which keep trying to curl up into a figure-8 (or worse) while you're trying to mount them.

When I raised my head into the slipstream, the mirror caught the wind just right and whipped off.

Get one of the ones made with a spoke that lets you modify the bend to suit your glasses. Mine (a "Beer-View mirror, made by Dick Bird in Irvine, CA) would let me swing the glasses around by the mirror and the glasses absolutely will not come off of it. Actually it's somewhat of a challenge to get it off even with two able hands.

According to this test, you're more likely to break steel than aluminum. And since the time of that test, steel has gotten frightfully thin, not the kind of thing that any ol' welder can handle. I've broken steel, twice, even though there was no rust.

Uh, where did you get that? Outboard-bearing BBs last far longer, for two reasons. One is that there's room for more and bigger ball bearings. The other is that there's less force on them since they're father apart. The wider stance on them results in less leverage up & down with pedaling, and less forward & back with chain tension. In fact, with a triple, the right-side bearing is almost in the plane of the middle ring. I'm on my outboard-bearing BB, and it has 27,000 miles on it and it feels and acts brand new, totally smooth and with no slop. I've never had any inboard-bearing BB last anywhere near that long.

Edit: That's with a lot of out-of-the-saddle climbing and other hard riding. Our younger son had the Isis type sealed inboard-bearing BB for awhile, and even though he only weighed 120 pounds at the time, he was wearing one out every 3,000 miles. The owner of our LBS was using Ultegra and Dura-Ace Octalink ones and he said they weren't lasting him any more than a few thousand miles each, either.